This site and our podcast are free to use and listen to respectively. Though there are costs involved in maintaining and producing both. If you like, please make a donation to help offset these costs and to help ensure that we can continue to bring you both. Thank you so much.

You can make a one time donation of any amount you like using the above "Donate" button. If you rather make an annual recurring donation of $25 (that is less than 50 cents a week), use the "Subscribe" button below.

[Quote by: Mohan] I put up a review last week after I saw the movie on my blog. Check it out. What really is frustrating is that the movie seems to have gotten universal praise. I've come out against how lame the plot is and people keep telling me that I'm a trekkie and being picky--as though my actually wanting a good story behind a sci-fi flick to be some crazy thing. Personally, with ticket prices being so high, yeah, I'd like the story to actually make sense. You can boil the plot down to a few sentences and, when you do that, you have to shake your head and go: What?! It's just lame. And I guess it's just "fate" and "good luck" that Kirk happened to land on the ice planet, and happened to be saved by someone important, and then they just happened to meet someone who could help them beam across the universe and get them back into the thick of things. That's called lazy writing in my book.

I hear you. And yet I didn't read the scenes in that way. Delta Vega, the ice planet, was well described as being in the Vulcan system. The Enterprise was leisurely departing the system at the time Kirk got thrown out. Spock would likely have known there was a Starfleet facility there; he wasn't randomly depositing Kirk to die. The escape pod tells Kirk to wait for pickup in "a few minutes". Spock Prime would likely have been able to monitor Starfleet communications as he, too, knew where the Starfleet facility was. So there's every chance Spock Prime knew that a SF escape pod had landed nearby.

Likewise, Nero's placement of Spock Prime is not random or haphazard. First, there's what we've already seen. He wanted Spock Prime to be in a place to witness the death of Vulcan. This was a planet with a reasonable enough proximity to afford that. Case closed. However, there is/will be more. In a filmed scene that will appear on the DVD, we'll learn that Nero was sent to Rura Penthe (the Klingon's icy prison seen in ST VI and Enterprise). Turns out he was captured and sent there after that attack on Klingons that Uhura picked up — and that's where he spent the 25 years waiting for Spock Prime to re-emerge. It's therefore poetic justice that Nero, who's a very eye-for-an-eye kinda guy, deposits Spock Prime on the planet.

As for Scotty, c'mon, that's all in the script. It's a lot less intrusive thing to me than McCoy just happening to sit down next to Kirk in the shuttle. I mean you want to talk total coincidence, look at that scene, not anything that happens on Delta Vega. It totally makes sense that Scotty's engineering enthusiasm would land him in the bad graces of Admiral Archer. It was especially sweet that the specific problem had to do with transwarp transporting. I mean that's just perfect. It's entirely character based that he draws the worst assignment in Starfleet.

Thing is, when you're doing an origin story, people have to meet some way for the first time. When you look back on your own life, how many of the friendships you develop start as the result of pure coincidence? Answer: a lot of them. Whether they come because you decided to apply at Job #1 instead of Job #2, or because you just sat down next to a person on a long train ride, or because you went to a club actively looking to meet someone — the sequence of events that draw us together often hinge on complete chance. So the guy in the deserted space station turns out to be Montgomery Scott who knows a hell of a lot about transporter technology. Is that really more of a coincidence than the girl you met at a kegger becoming your wife?

Seriously, the Scotty meet-n-greet was awesome, because the script told us why he was there, the reason made sense, and it was entirely inline with his character as we knew it coming into the movie.

The real questions are these:

Why was Uhura in the bar? Cause it's a bar. What's she doing in a bar in Iowa? Isn't she supposed to be from Africa? Why didn't she depart for San Fran directly from her home area? What, they needed a lay-over in Des Moines? (The likely answer is that they were on a field trip to the construction site of the new flagship, but the script doesn't actually tell us that.)

Why was McCoy on that particular shuttle leaving Iowa? Cause he was. And, again, why the staging area in Iowa? He's got less reason to be there than Uhura. Like Kirk, he's a fresh recruit, without so much as a uniform. So why'd he end up there? What's so damned special about Iowa in the future? (Again, you can just about come up with an answer. He's there, likely, cause that's where Pike is. Pike's checking out what will be his ship. So if you want an interview with the boss, that's where you go. But again, no real reason for McCoy being in the shuttlecraft is actually given.)

Don't get me wrong: I liked these scenes. They're funny scenes, well-acted scenes — but they're not better-scripted scenes. No, the two major "meet-n-greets" that make the most sense are Kirk-Spock and Kirk-Scott.

As an aside, I hope that we get a LOTR style "long cut" when this thing comes out on DVD because there are a number of scenes that were filmed but didn't make it into the theatrical cut. Another one off the top of my head is the birth of Spock, which is seen in the second trailer, but not the movie. Somehow, I think their might be a lot of good stuff that's been reserved to drive DVD sales. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the "Deluxe edition" had a 2:30 runtime.

"I think of myself as ambitious in casting terms, and I know that Bonnie [Langford] has the potential to make the part totally unirritating . . ." — JNT, 1986

ok this should explane about the story tying into the star trek canon:
nero created an alternate time line when he went back in time and killed captain kirk's dad.

so an alternate time line was created, so it's be cause of that vulcan got destroyed, kirk became the captain early, spock became the science officer on the enterprise early, and everything else that happened.

so now they can do what they want with the star trek universe.

"Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth."

No, Darth, respectfully, and of course, IMO. Kirk and Spock met before that on the bridge. McCoy didn't know Kirk when he sat down. That's how they met. I always imagined them meeting somehow like that or maybe even earlier. Uhura I'll give you: I imagined them meeting in the Academy and frankly, in my mind made TREK past, Kirk didn't flirt with her right away seeing how intelligent and smart she was. however, as you've said there could be some explanation for Uhura being there. Why was she put in Starfleet before Kirk? To me, a sort of fly by night, insolent Kirk would need MORE time to be the Kirk we knew rather than have him do the Capt thing earlier. How'd this guy ever pass anything in Starfleet in THREE YEARS????

And as you say all the coincidences that happen with the Kirk exiled thing, Spock knowing thing can be explained and will be I'm sure in great detail by fans and dvds and books...but it's not up there on the screen to make sense for us at the time. When viewers have to figure out everything in the basic plot, that's bad. Some things are fine and in a tv show like THE PRISONER or SPACE: 1999 some viewer thought needs to be encouraged and manifested. But in a simple dimple story like this that has NO depth? It needed explanations. In fact, if Spock knew there were others on the planet, that's an even stupider idea to send Kirk down to the planet so that Kirk can join up with exiled criminals or whatever they were to escape again. Why not just put him in a cell and keep guards over him to watch him?

And am I to take it that Spock is demoted or demotes himself FOR GOOD? He was captain and then he's first officer? Oh, his character flaw makes it okay to be second in command but not first? He has no self control WHILE he's a captain? What kind of academy is STARFLEET?

Spock shows emotion all throughout. That's bad. He's supposed to have conquered his emotion while at Starfleet or at least buried it for a good long time. Yet here he's attacking Kirk on the bridge for a school boy taunt! and kissing a human girl. I could be way wrong but didn't he sort of rail against his mother-father human/Vulcan thing or at least decide to NOT go that route to stay in control of himself? Okay so they changed the one really iconic character of TREK to be...more human. Bad choice.

If I have to work that hard to enjoy a movie that's barely worth it, I would rather opt out. Especially when it reeks this bad.

I have the weirdest problem with this film. I loved it, I thought it was in the top 4 of all Star Trek films. Visually it was stunning, Kirk, Spock and McCoy were perfectly cast. The story was pretty good and I enjoyed all the in jokes!

That said, it is the in jokes, as well as the fact that it features the classic series characters that really infuriate me. Why did they have to go back to Kirk and Co? We have had three seasons (four if you include the animated series) and 6/7 feature films to explore these characters and their relationships with each other... Do we need more?

And it is the focus of the relationship between the three main characters that is the problem. These relationships have been explored brilliantly in the television series and expecially in the first 6 feature films. This film is all about reassuring the fans that these relationships are going to be the same, that it is still the same characters with the same dynamics that we have seen before. We have seen this, do we need to see it again?
Whilst watching the film I had a checklist... Spock says "Fascinating" and raises his eyebrows:"Check". McCoy says "I'm and Doctor, not a nuclear Physicist" : Check. Spock does a Vulcan Neck Grip : "Check" and so forth. It was all the same lines, the same gags as before. Everything about this film, right down to the "Space, the final frontier" and the classic series theme tune at the end is saying "we may have a new timeline but this is still the same series as before!"

As this film was a success we are pretty much guaranteed another 3 or 4 films using all the same toys we have playing with for the last 40 years, the same ship (NO MORE ENTERPRISE... Star Trek is so much more!), the same characters and the same character dynamics... I want new toys Dammit!!! The new timeline is a brilliant and highly original way of avoiding having a new idea!

There were ways to avoid this. What about if Kirk and Spock remained enemies at the end of the film and that the dynamics between them and all the characters were totally different from what we have seen before? If you are gonna mess with time go the whole hog, completely alter the dynamics between the characters... Show us something new! But instead, we are going to see more of Spock battling his human side, McCoy getting irritated with Spock and Kirk sticking two fingers up at authority!

Speaking of the two fingers, I am also upset that this film effectively raises them at all the Star Trek series and films that we have grown to love/hate! None of it has happened now!

All that said, I couldn't help but love it! It was funny, well paced and lovely to watch... yet I come away from it really, really angry... I am a walking contradiction and have never felt this way about any other film that I have seen!

Ideally, the next film will feature none of these characters (or maybe one or two just to "pass the torch on") and be set on another ship with another crew but, of course, this will never happen! I wanted new Star Trek, not new old Star Trek. This popular trend (started by George Lucas) of going back to the beginning and doing prequels (what a horrid word) may be commercially sound but, I feel, hampers creativity and original ideas. And I think this is going to be the case with Star Trek for at least the next decade. It is a shame!

So in summary... A great film but a total disaster for Star Trek as a series! The most glorious disaster in television/film history???!!!

Frankly, TREK to me is dead. I feel the same way you do EXCEPT they should not use anyone to revive it. They did tht with Next Gene and we got a fairly good show (although if you count how many good eps there are...as to how many there are) and a great captain. They tried it with DEEP SLEEP MINE and although I hate that shw with a passion, it got ratings and fans. Thn they tried it with VOYAGER and again another success but for me it ended with 7 of 9 and her boobies. Then we got ENTERPRISE, the weakest of the lot, boring characters, boring people, boring actors, borng plots. So if you want something new, nd new is what Enterprise brought, then I can't agree with you. I thought going back would be good but it wasn'. Myabe the next movie wll improe story, acting, plot, dialog, some humor tha'ts actually funny, charcter etc but I doubt it. This is NOT the same TREK as befor, it's different only with the same characters of 40 plus years and 6 movies but now they're doing whatever the hell hey feel like doing with them. I say if you are going to do TREK do it right or not at all, to get it wrong is so WRONG, so boring, so overdone, so crppy...

[Quote by: Chase] Soooo, Dalzo, you liked it but you didn't want any of it? HuH?

Frankly, TREK to me is dead. I feel the same way you do EXCEPT they should not use anyone to revive it. They did tht with Next Gene and we got a fairly good show (although if you count how many good eps there are...as to how many there are) and a great captain. They tried it with DEEP SLEEP MINE and although I hate that shw with a passion, it got ratings and fans. Thn they tried it with VOYAGER and again another success but for me it ended with 7 of 9 and her boobies. Then we got ENTERPRISE, the weakest of the lot, boring characters, boring people, boring actors, borng plots. So if you want something new, nd new is what Enterprise brought, then I can't agree with you. I thought going back would be good but it wasn'. Myabe the next movie wll improe story, acting, plot, dialog, some humor tha'ts actually funny, charcter etc but I doubt it. This is NOT the same TREK as befor, it's different only with the same characters of 40 plus years and 6 movies but now they're doing whatever the hell hey feel like doing with them. I say if you are going to do TREK do it right or not at all, to get it wrong is so WRONG, so boring, so overdone, so crppy...

I do disagree with you on some points (now there's a surprise). I think there is still a place for Star Trek. I would rather it stay dead then go backwards like we did with Enterprise and this new Star trek but then again I once said that they should never bring Doctor Who back and boy, was I wrong about that. I also don't understand your hatred for DS9 (or Deep Sleep Slime/Mine... Was that really meant to be funny?). That was easily the best of the Star Trek shows. It's ongoing storyline was organic starting with Bajor recovering from its occupation, running the risk of civil war by the Circle and the Maquis, then the introduction of the Dominion and the founders leading to all out war! It was beautifully spread across the seven years and showed the most character development of any of the series. All the main characters (as well as most of the semi-regulars of which there was a lot) are totally different then they were when the series started, with the possible exception of Quark. Sisko went from a broken man after the death of his wife and a skeptic of the Prophets to a man at peace, remarried, he started to believe in his Emissary status and then joined the prophets. Kira started of as an angry terrorist, unable to be friends with anybody and ended up at peace with herself, a colonel and not only got over her racial hatred for the Cardassians but helped them liberate their planet from the Dominion (cleverly echoing Bajors situation at the beginning of the series). Then you can look at the story arc for Gul Dukat, Kai Winn, Nog, Rom, even Jake and I could go on with nearly every recurring character in this series... Boring? I think not!!!. If you look at Next Gen and Voyager by the time you reach their last episodes nearly all the characters are the same as their first with the exception of Data, The Doctor and 7 of 9!
The only truly bad thing about DS9 is Avery Brooks acting. But his character is good and he is not a bad director so I can forgive him and the show for it!

The real reason for the demise of Star Trek is that Rick Berman and Brannon Braga stayed on as the main showrunners for way too long (which is why I salute RTD for leaving Doctor Who before this happens). Voyager had great potential but was flawed when by the third episode the federation and the Maquis crewmembers started to get on. Why have a mixed ship if it is not a source of conflict? There should have been more made of the fact that they were alone and struggling but it just turned into an alien of the week show with the reset button being hit at the end of the episode (which is another thing I loved about DS9, it never hit the reset button... If something happened it could have consequences for years such as Odo finding out his people are the founders!). Next Gen has dated but is still a great show, it has some desperately exciting episodes and Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner were always extremely watchable.
By the time Enterprise came along you could tell that stories from other series were being recycled and it didn't get interesting until halfway through the third season and the fourth was quite good. A horrible final episode though!!!

I would like Star Trek to come back as a new television series with a new producer, and ongoing storyline (as has become standard in television series these days) a new look and an original idea (maybe set it on a timeship in the 26th century). Like Doctor Who, it could be great again. Unfortunately we are stuck with the same characters and their relationships with each other that has already been explored in some depth... Which is a shame!!!

Deep Space Nine, I admit was a popular show and one that changed, possibly for the better but I hated all the characters, was not fond of any of the actors, and found both Borjaw (Bajor) and the Cardassians as well as the Dominion contrived, dull races and could not care less about arcs that never seemed to get resolved. Then the death knell as far as my wanting to watch this junk was the addition of Worf as a crewmember. I think they took all the most unlikable characters and plotlines from NEXT GENE and put them on Deep Space Nine...as well as trying to copy/rip off BABYLON 5, another show I hate with a passion as it too is full of unlikable characters, boring dragged out plots and one note visuals.

As for DOCTOR WHO being brought back: yeah you were wrong and I...well, I thought it would never happen but that it could be done if done correctly and it WAS. Key word is WAS. Somehow PRSENTLY, RTD thinks he can pass of any old junk on us and get away with it..wait, he is. It seems people will watch any old junk just because of its past and past history (by this I mean a great first season and three fairly good seasons that followed with diminishing returns on all RTD's scripts post Doomsday, although by that I mean quality as ratings seemED to just go up with any old junk like the Master triliogy and the Journey's End bs). So was it a good thing to have it back? Yeah, I'd say so but that more or less depends on where it will end up. Hopefully RTD will be out of DW forever once he leaves and hopefully the damage he is inflicting won't leave the new crew with a hopelss situation of getting back quality and emotion.

Somewhere else today I'll porbably post about how when Tom Baker left, so did a great deal of the restraints on script editors and producers and writers. Everyone complains that Tom Baker wasn't restrained by anyone enough..but if you look at the facts and think about it, once he left, the script quality got worse, the companion quality got worse, and although Davison's era survived JNT, Eric Saward and Pip and Jan as well as others, and two or three weaker than Tom Baker actors who didn't rail against scripts and silly boring dull plots...all did their damage to the show so that we got after Davison left was a producer who didn't care to be there, fired good writers and promoted the show more than worked on it and when he did, he wasn't curtailed by those with better taste such as Chris Bidmead. In addition, someone like Barbara Clegg who wrote a good story was used only once. Then we had a situation where in TRIAL, when Colin asked what or where his Doctor is supposed to be coming from and how he should play a scene, Eric, the script editor told him to ask the writer or the director, and they in turn told him to ask Eric! WTF? That would never have happened in Tom Baker's time. Forwhatever reason they didn't really want to fire Tom or couldn't for whatever reason and that made DW better. Once he was gone, the took a slow but steady downfall in to crap time. Look at TRIAL, not one of the endings of each part is fully resolved satisfactorily...say what you want about Tom's stories, they all were entertaining and iwth the exceoption of INVISIBLE ENEMY and ANDroid INVASION, all of them had a logical internal consistency that made them make sense. TRIAL and TIME AND THE RANI and PARADISE TOWERS are just the start of major embarassments for the DW show and largely unwatchable to be honest.

Anyway I'm digressing and posted that here and now.

Back to TREK: it's a matter of taste I guess. I hated all the actors and charactrs on DEEP SPACE NINE and to have a story arc stretching over seven seasons is far too long for me, especially one that really didn't grab me and seem to be very original to begin with. None of the races involved with DS9 were interesting and they seemed to be trying to ape BABYLON 5 as well as real world politics, which the original TREK show did as well..and those were among the most boring of the origina TREK as well but at least back then it was the 60s. Now we're talking about the 1990s and DS9 just dragged it all out into a major conflict, one which hardly ever ended with action. Each time I tried to return to the "show" it was people talking about conflicts that started dully on NExT GENE and still were not resolved and talk talk talk. No humor, no action, not even new or interestig visuals. I want my TREK to take me to strange new bold places, not hover over the same planet every week.

In fact, 1990s TREK suffered from the talk syndrome. As if talking is something that is always good. This is a visual medium, and 90s TREk got it all wrong. The visuals were usually just the set, cause that ship was expensive and had to be exhibited all the time and other sets and planet location shooting was not going to happen. If they did go to a planet, ti was a big sterile roomy building and/or dark dank corridors and corners of a city. And...mostly nothing happened there but more talk, more talk...but to be honest I tuned out every time the Bajorian/Cardassian and Dominion thing was brought up and didn't watch a great deal of them because every time I tried to I was bored into deep sleep.

Characters changing is one thing but did any of these characters really change for the better? I don't know, I wasn't watching by the end and could care less. Just because characters change does'nt mea nthe story is any good or worth watching or entertaining. The other main stay of 1990s TREk was time twisting and time traveling, admittedly with better results than the WAR thing. I was sick of the WAR thing on all the TREK shows, war against Romulans, Klingon takeovers, the Bajor thing and boy did I grow sick of the Borg (the best villains at first) over and over agian. Not to mention these ALIEN like things in VOYAGER.

Okay, aside frm cheapo holodeck plots, the time thing: I'd tune into VOYAGER to find everyone dead and gone and buried or something and then find that Garret Wang's character was doing what he had to put it right. Reset. Now resets can work at times: LEGEND OF THE SEEKER did this well in the finale. But more often than not, they leave me feeling like "What did i watch that for if nothing was effected and nothing good came from the experience or the characters didn't face choices they couldn't in the other time line?" Truth is TREK by the numbers was going on since NEXT GENE started. Want a conflict? Throw in past people n the first season ending and make others think that they will figure prominetly in the next season?

Another thing they did that pissed me off was hint at gay rights but never fully integrating a gay person into the main cast or crew of the show. And again, instead of action, all we saw was talk and talk, the hope of something. I mean did Beverly and Picard ever hook up? Troi and Riker? No, I don't think Troi did. Didn't she end up with Worf? Who she barely spoke to in every one of the 125 thousand eps they were in together?

TREk blew it charcter wise, background wise, storywise, plot wise, visually, and action wise. True they had some really good episodes. I did like many of the early Q stories and found his VOYAGER stories interesting but for the most part...one VOYAGER story had the Doctor waking up many years later to find aliens who believed Janeway was like a Hitler. Interesting stuff that. 7 of 9 stories bored me. Data Stories bored me cause he almost never went anywhere or changed until the movies.

One thing about the original show: you never knew what you were going to get, good or bad. A comedy one week, a tragic story the next, a Halloween episode, a war episode. It changed from week to week and moved fast and furious, most of the time. It had strange new aliens every week. In 90s TREk we were stuck with aliens with paste on faces and strage tattoos and jewelry which after three weeks was boring and silly and dull. If I want a tv show about the Middle East, I'd watch a TV show about the MIddle East, not STAR TREK. Once in a while it would have been okay but to base an entire seven years around it, was dull. And again, there were no charaters I could relate to at all. I could care less about Odo, Rom, Jake, Sisko, the Asian lady, and the engineer, who once he left TREK became more boring and less funny as he was on TREK. I can't even remember his name. NOTHING DS9 did, for me, was right as it stretched on and on.

VOYAGER was a step in the right direction however, once 7 of 9 came on, it got worse, storywise. It was really out there in space but again, once she came on, it became the Data rip off story. And more WAR. And a few time twists and time travels and stuff. I gave up on TREK then and there, once Kess left and I found it being the 7 of 9 show in seasons four and five. I cannot tell you what happened after that bar a Q episode or two here and there. And Enterprise had one or two weeks to win me and failed to. It was NOT the old style TREK it promised to be but junky old 1990s TREK. With even more boring characters.

I DO recall one DS9 story that I missed the bulk of : the Doctor and the enginner (Bashir and the engineer I forgot his name) are in a universe dominated by aliens and the two have to work together to get back. I don't know what their differences were (to me they both seemed to be agreeable types but perhaps by then, the 1990 tradition of angsting EVERYONE happened) but this seemed interesting. Unfortunately I never got to see that ep again.

Sorry to be like this but I never really considered myself a big TREK fan but at one point, I felt it coming on (Season three of NEXT GENE where they actually got off the ship more than once or twice a season!) but it passed with a fourth season consisting of whole eps totally on the ship and more holodeck stuff.

1990s TREK almost always promised to do more and sometimes touched on more and as in the drug planet ep of NEXT did hit the mark but more often than not, they dissapointed, bored, and let me down.